Planescape 5 New D&D Books Coming in 2023 -- Including Planescape!

At today's Wizards Presents event, hosts Jimmy Wong, Ginny Di, and Sydnee Goodman announced the 2023 line-up of D&D books, which featured something old, something new, and an expansion of a fan favorite.

The first of the five books, Keys from the Golden Vault, will arrive in winter 2023. At Tuesday's press preview, Chris Perkins, Game Design Architect for D&D, described it as “Ocean’s Eleven meets D&D” and an anthology of short adventures revolving around heists, which can be dropped into existing campaigns.

In Spring 2023, giants get a sourcebook just like their traditional rivals, the dragons, did in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants will be a deep dive into hill, frost, fire, cloud, and storm giants, plus much more.

Summer 2023 will have two releases. The Book of Many Things is a collection of creatures, locations, and other player-facing goodies related to that most famous D&D magic item, the Deck of Many Things. Then “Phandelver Campaign” will expand the popular Lost Mine of Phandelver from the D&D Starter Set into a full campaign tinged with cosmic horror.

And then last, but certainly not least, in Fall 2023, WotC revives another classic D&D setting – Planescape. Just like Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, Planescape will be presented as a three-book set containing a setting guide, bestiary, and adventure campaign in a slipcase. Despite the Spelljammer comparison they did not confirm whether it would also contain a DM screen.

More information on these five titles will be released when we get closer to them in date.

 

[see]

You must have played a lot at higher levels than us lol.

Really, you didn't have games reach 7th level? Man, there was a lot of sweet gameplay there!

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Really, you didn't have games reach 7th level? Man, there was a lot of sweet gameplay there!

This is 1e ya'll are talking about. It's entirely possible they got TPK'd by some slime before they got to that level.

 

[Demetrios1453]

To slide things back onto subject a bit, I wonder when we'll start getting info on the 2023 products? I imagine that we will be getting some info concerning Keys from the Golden Vault here soon - I assume probably shortly after the new year? I wonder if they'll start teasing the Bigby's Giants book (which I'm very interested in) as well, or hold off until after Keys is out...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Really, you didn't have games reach 7th level? Man, there was a lot of sweet gameplay there!

Not 14th, I mean, so it was irrelevant. We weren't usually in settings where you could prance around paying 14th-level Clerics (incredibly rare even in the FR) for anything. Even 9th level ones you'd be lucky if you could find them and they were willing. I think we managed to pull that off once. Either way you're looking at near impossibility unless there's a PC Cleric (which was where virtually every raise/res we saw came from, that and a few magic items/scrolls).

More to the point, I don't think anyone who wasn't originally a 1E player or learned from 1E players even really understood that restriction. It's completely unstated and barely even implied (thanks to "other creatures") in 2E material, even Complete Elves (where you'd expect some coverage). I didn't even see a copy of Deities and Demigods until 1993 (and I only glanced through it then), which is apparently where it was explained.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To slide things back onto subject a bit, I wonder when we'll start getting info on the 2023 products? I imagine that we will be getting some info concerning Keys from the Golden Vault here soon - I assume probably shortly after the new year? I wonder if they'll start teasing the Bigby's Giants book (which I'm very interested in) as well, or hold off until after Keys is out...

So far they've had a very "one product at a time" approach to giving out major info, so I would expect that'd continue.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The highest level player character I saw in 1st/2nd edition was level 12. But they where a druid, so their XP curve was a bit wonky.

And they didn't start at 1st level. Levelling was dead slow in those early editions, I can't see how you could reach level 14 within the lifespan of an edition, playing RAW.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

To slide things back onto subject a bit, I wonder when we'll start getting info on the 2023 products? I imagine that we will be getting some info concerning Keys from the Golden Vault here soon - I assume probably shortly after the new year? I wonder if they'll start teasing the Bigby's Giants book (which I'm very interested in) as well, or hold off until after Keys is out...

My guess is they want to wait until after the holidays. Great time of year to be marketing something people can buy as a gift right now, but not so much for something still a couple months down the road... Or so I would assume - I'm hardly an expert.

I expect they'll probably start ramping up the coverage for Keys in the next week or two.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

February is coming up fast, that's for sure. If it is at all related to Honor Among Thieves, I imagine they'll be doing double-duty to advertise both.

My guess is they want to wait until after the holidays. Great time of year to be marketing something people can buy as a gift right now, but not so much for something still a couple months down the road... Or so I would assume - I'm hardly an expert.

I expect they'll probably start ramping up the coverage for Keys in the next week or two.

 

[Remathilis]

Players get attached to their characters. They've invested time and thought into their background and mannerisms. Why should they give them up and make a new character?

This was the fatal flaw in Gary's D&D; there was never an expectation of emotional attachment. You don't grow fond of the Monopoly top hat, or of Miss Scarlett, or of the 14th French Light Cavalry Unit. They are all pieces of a game. Which is why the Pre-Hickman style of D&D treats PCs as pieces in a game rather than characters in a story.

 

[Clint_L]

This was the fatal flaw in Gary's D&D; there was never an expectation of emotional attachment. You don't grow fond of the Monopoly top hat, or of Miss Scarlett, or of the 14th French Light Cavalry Unit. They are all pieces of a game. Which is why the Pre-Hickman style of D&D treats PCs as pieces in a game rather than characters in a story.

This has some truth to it, but let's not overstate things. Players could and did keep characters for a long, long time and we became very attached to them. GG himself had a number of characters that he played for years - Mordenkainen, for example.

 

[Remathilis]

This has some truth to it, but let's not overstate things. Players could and did keep characters for a long, long time and we became very attached to them. GG himself had a number of characters that he played for years - Mordenkainen, for example.

I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm saying that it was an accidental discovery rather than something planned for and addressed in the rules. Which is why the rules and the game itself have moved from grinding though dozens of magic-users until you get a Mordenkainen who survives, to a more Raistlin "playing a single PC from low to high level across a single campaign" style.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is 1e ya'll are talking about. It's entirely possible they got TPK'd by some slime before they got to that level.

It's entirely possible they got TPKed by giant frogs lurking under a drawbridge.

(An extremely real source of 1E TPKs.)

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

It's entirely possible they got TPKed by giant frogs lurking under a drawbridge.

(An extremely real source of 1E TPKs.)

Frogs are pretty slimy, so I'm still right.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Been DMing 2E campaign again and after about 6 months of playing every weekend they have all reached level 4 give or take. Out of the 5 only 2 have lived through the whole campaign so far. A Wizard/Cleric and a Druid.

XP is given for monsters defeated (dead or snuck around or driven off etc etc), completing quests, and bonus XP as I see fit. Sometimes the game ends with 500 XP each, sometimes 2K each.

It's been very nice to go back to XP use. The players look forward levels more. Levels aren't just assumed to go up every other session or so. And they seem so much happier to gain a level then they did in 5E due to the increased lethality of AD&D.

Of course this doesn't really work with 5E since everyone has the same xp limits.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This was the fatal flaw in Gary's D&D; there was never an expectation of emotional attachment. You don't grow fond of the Monopoly top hat, or of Miss Scarlett, or of the 14th French Light Cavalry Unit. They are all pieces of a game. Which is why the Pre-Hickman style of D&D treats PCs as pieces in a game rather than characters in a story.

It was an aspect of Gary's D&D. Calling it a flaw is just personal opinion.

 

[Faolyn]

Been DMing 2E campaign again and after about 6 months of playing every weekend they have all reached level 4 give or take. Out of the 5 only 2 have lived through the whole campaign so far. A Wizard/Cleric and a Druid.

XP is given for monsters defeated (dead or snuck around or driven off etc etc), completing quests, and bonus XP as I see fit. Sometimes the game ends with 500 XP each, sometimes 2K each.

It's been very nice to go back to XP use. The players look forward levels more. Levels aren't just assumed to go up every other session or so. And they seem so much happier to gain a level then they did in 5E due to the increased lethality of AD&D.

Of course this doesn't really work with 5E since everyone has the same xp limits.

See, In all of my 5e games, I've never seen anyone expect to go up a level "every other session." We do milestone leveling and it's pretty obvious to us all that we go up in level only after achieving the milestone, not just at random times when we have defeated enough monsters--which is especially good for us because we're not a combat-heavy group. Mind, achieving the milestone does usually have a boss fight attached to it, but combat isn't the main point of the game as a whole.

...Actually, I think the only time we did go up rapidly was when we were using encounter XP, and that was when two of the players decided to convert the GDQ series to 5e. And we as a group decided we didn't really like that game because it was all combat with very little RP.

 

[Faolyn]

It was an aspect of Gary's D&D. Calling it a flaw is just personal opinion.

Considering this is a role-playing game, it's definitely a flaw to expect to treat the characters as nothing more than pawns.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Considering this is a role-playing game, it's definitely a flaw to expect to treat the characters as nothing more than pawns.

Again, a flaw from your perspective.

 

[Faolyn]

Again, a flaw from your perspective.

It's not a flaw to expect a role-playing game to include role-playing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Again, a flaw from your perspective.

I don't think this really flies man, and I don't mean that meanly.

I don't think it flies because Gary himself repented of this view later in his career, so he clearly eventually came to see it as a flaw or at least not something desirable. Dangerous Journeys, for all we may (and should) criticise it, absolutely sees PCs as well-developed characters, not playing pieces, and isn't anywhere near as murderous as D&D could be early on. Also it has a hideously fiddly chargen system so you'd be righteously mad if you had to keep making new DJ characters lol (I'm still mad about "Metaphysical Speed" as a substat lol just screw you man!).

The character-as-playing-piece is interesting because you can see how it bridges the gap from military simulations where maybe the people involved were "playing" specific individuals, and training-exercise-type roleplay and more Dave Arneson-esque RP where you're playing a character you actually created and invested with life.

It also helps, in my opinion, explain why players are so much more okay (in my 30+ years of experience lol) with pre-gen PCs getting killed than PCs they created getting killed.

Unless they've played them a long time (i.e. say deep into a WEG Star Wars Darkstryder campaign), people tend to see pre-gens as just "playing pieces". Yeah they'll ham it up a bit, they'll RP them, sometimes they'll even go outside their comfort zone, but it's because they don't care, not because they do care.

I think it's fair to say roleplaying games wouldn't have ever become as big as they did if we'd stuck to the Gygaxian meatgrinder/playing piece approach. In fact, they'd probably have evolved into "dungeon combat" games rather than stays as RPGs (there are tons of examples of these, WotC produced a bunch even).